When you think Australia Day, what do you think? Roast lamb? Bogans? Triple J’s Hottest 100? Or maybe netbooks, like the HP Mini 210 range that’s launching on Australia Day.
Yesterday, we saw the best laptops at any price. But what about their little brothers, the netbooks? Quite simply, here are the three best models that you should choose from, provided by Mark Spoonauer from LAPTOP:
HP is like a netbook gatling gun at the moment: weeks after the Linux based Mini 101, they’ve fired off the next round in the shape of the Mini 5101.
It’s safe to say we’ve hit the third generation of netbooks. They’re nice now. The HP Mini 5105 strikes at Asus Eee Seashell‘s fancily contoured plastic with aluminium and magnesium. Oh yeah, and 95-percent chiclet keyboard that feels fantastic.
10 Inches, it seems, is a bit of a sweet spot for netbooks, and the HP Mini 2140 has a 10-inch screen. But sadly, that line that drivers of expensive sports cars tell themselves all the time: “It’s not how big it is, it’s how you use it that counts” is ultimately true, at least with this particular device.
Judging by the sudden influx of local product launches of products we saw at CES, it looks like the current Aussie release delay is about 6 weeks. The latest CES gadget to hit Aussie shelves is the HP Mini 2140 (don’t call it a) netbook.
Initially, HP indicated that a 3G WWAN-equipped version of their newest netbook, the HP Mini 1000, would be arriving sometime in December. But if we are to believe a forum poster on Pocketables.net, all it takes to get 3G humming on an HP Mini 1000 today is to download a driver and slide in your SIM card in a mysteriously hidden slot under the battery.
On Halloween, our spooky Mark “The Great Pumpkiniser” Wilson discovered $US200 Eee netbooks were a distinct possibility next year. That’s a great start, but there was also word this weekend that $US99 netbooks could be around the corner too. Of course there’s a catch, and anyone with a mobile phone can probably guess what it is.
